hats and a love story

My family has one photo of my great-grandmother when she was a baby, and she is wearing the best hat I have ever seen on anyone, especially a baby. Her dad was a hat-maker, so I guess she had her pick of great hats. Being a hat maker was a thing back then, I also guess.

Today I think hats are mainly a way to tell people what sports team you like, but when my great-great-grandfather made hats, it didn't matter what sports team you liked. Hats were for everyone. In fact I've spent a lot of time looking at this photo of my great-grandmother and I still have no idea what sports team she liked. This is all true.

And then the part that isn't true, but that I love, is that one day my great-grandmother grew up and fell in love with a man with the biggest skull in the world, a man that looked terrible in hats, a man whose children would have globes instead of heads and would also look terrible in hats and would never have mysterious baby pictures wearing million-dollar hats. It was the opposite of everything her parents wanted for her. And she sat them down and she said "Listen, there are ten things in the world that are less important than love, and one of them is hats."

And she married him, and her dad came to the wedding in a hat so fantastic the other wedding guests wanted to scratch their eyes out so it would be the last thing they ever saw.

And she had seven children, each with a bigger head than the one before. That is why my grandmother's head is so big she uses a punch bowl as a fitting tool when she crochets beanies. That is why my mom's head is so big she can't ride bikes because no helmets will fit. And that is why my head is so big that when I look in the mirror it is hard to see both the left and right edges of it, and that is why I look terrible in hats, and that is why if you want to know what my favorite sports team is, you will have to ask me. It's the Minnesota Twins.

/>

Pictures to break up the text!

We are going to be friends

Now that we've established how cool being a babysitter at age 24 is, I have an awesome babysitting story. I got a new (client, but my friends tease me for calling them clients so I'll say) family last week, and went to meet them for the first time Friday. I kind of hate meeting a new family, it's like a first date and once on a first date I hid behind a buffet table until the guy thought I was lost and wandered off.

This family had an 11-year-old girl. As I biked to their house I thought about what I was like at 11, just for reference. I was weird at 11. I know a lot of kids and I have yet to meet one who is as weird as I was as a child. All the kids I babysit are put-together, own iPhones, avoid carbs, and are a bit too cool for school. Sometimes too too cool for school in my opinion. Until Friday when I met the best 11-year-old in the world.

She answered the door wearing a shirt with a picture of a cow holding a loaf of bread and it said "Paris." I had that shirt when I was little. I wore it with a "Got Milk?" hat because I felt like they went together.

"Do you like chocolate?" she asked.

I didn't have to answer. As soon as we made eye contact both of us knew that we had finally met our best friend, a person who was exactly like us in every way.

Alright I did answer. I love chocolate.

But this girl has the most beautiful off-kilter sometimes-hilarious-sometimes-hopelessly-bizarre sense of humor. She has hair so thick it goes past her shoulders. She painted a life-size portrait of Obama and hung it over her desk. She is obsessed with baseball. She speaks French. "Why don't we decorate the kitchen like it's a café and invent every kind of hot chocolate we can think of?" she asked.

While watching her cat pee in the yard she sighed and announced "I pretty much live in denim." Not because it was relevant. Just because she had a thought and felt like she needed to say it. Where have you been all my life, 11-year-old girl? Love has a name, and it won't be revealed so as not to put any children in danger.

But I love this girl.

She is exactly like I was at age 11, and exactly how I guess I still am except now I'm slightly taller. She times her showers. Have you ever met anyone besides me who times their showers to see if they can set a personal record every day? I haven't. If you have, I'd like to meet them. I have a shirt with a cow and a loaf of bread on it they can borrow.

I've got a cobalt-blue beach cruiser and a bright future in sales

This was going to be a post about my super-hipster practically-useless one-speed beach cruiser a got for biking to work.

But instead it's going to be a rant about why no one wears a freaking helmet anymore. Have you forgotten everything you learned in bike safety class in second grade? Or did no one else have to take that class?

There are few things worse than leaving the apartment with clean clothes, a freshly-packed lunch, and a neat-o super-duper safe AND stylish helmet, only to pass thirty people who are biking around with hair blowing in the breeze. I don't know who these thick-skulled and soon-to-be-skull-less losers think they are, but they're sharing the road with giant pieces of steel that are going 50 mph, and the closest thing to protection I've seen anyone wearing are Dodgers baseball caps. Twins hats, of course, protect the wearer from any sort of bodily harm that may arise. I'm not aware that Dodgers caps have the same effect.

End of rant. Wear your helmet, you'll double the number of people in the world that are currently doing it.

1000 words

Today I was looking through my photos for a picture I can show to my students to tell them what life in the US is like. It's really hard to condense "life in the US" into a photo. Should I go with a photo of a baseball game? A snowstorm? Tacos? New York City?

If I had to pick one picture I want to describe my life it would be this one.

Because I love my family, and I love how Drew closes her eyes when she hugs people. And I love that she's hugging me the way you would hug a long-lost friend, but the reason for the hug is that she gave me some weights I wanted for my birthday.

And I love pinatas.

Now I'm off to search "eating tacos at a Yankees game during a blizzard" on Google images. You look at a picture of that and you feel like you're there.

the money's under your hat

MORNING
Woke up early and didn't have anything to do so I gave myself bangs. Yikes.



AFTERNOON
Saw someone downtown wearing a Twins hat! I have never been so excited to see a stranger in my whole life. My friends heard people speaking English and came over, and I introduced my new friend: "This guy is wearing a Twins hat!" After we parted ways they asked me where I knew him from. From five minutes ago when I saw he was wearing a Twins hat. Already covered this, guys.

Every time I see someone I know in Marseille I get so excited - "Almost a million people in this city, what are the chances I would see HER!" I always say. And my friends point out that the chances are pretty high, because this is the street she lives on, or we're all walking to the same restaurant, or it's a really popular bus stop. But I think meeting people from Minnesota was crazy, good luck convincing me otherwise.

NIGHT
Ate dinner at an Indian restaurant with fellow teachers and our awesome Parisian friend Anne. Then went home and my French family had dinner ready - gluten-free pasta salad. So I ate a second time, for the third time this week. Afterward we watched a movie and I fell asleep several times but I think I covered it up pretty well?

These middle-of-the-night baseball games are really messing up my sleeping schedule.

I'm going to call it right now.

Everyone here wears Yankees hats, which has had me seeing red the last couple days.

My friend said that when you ask a French person in a Yankees hat if they're a big fan, they always answer "What are Yankees? I love New York!" and point to the NY. So that's some consolation.

Even better consolation would be if I could watch it on tv when the Twins beat them tonight.

Joe Mauer Playstation commercial

I wish every commercial had Joe Mauer in it. This one is decent.

go Twins!

Twins are going to win the AL Central

This may be a little premature but I'm so excited for the Twins to win tomorrow!

go Twins

Vincent Laforet takes awesome photographs of sports games.